I have put a mini paper together for consideration please. The consultation and working up procedures should look at pros, cons and costs of both route options and let the people decide. Ditto a junction versus a station with the drawbacks a station would mean. We need to optimise scope of the physical re-railing theatre, not restrict to passenger only and then changing trains,. waiting time and costs contrast direct, cheaper and competitive end to end timings of buses for example.
Please work with us and liaise. There is a sense that the Borough is ignoring us and our contributions and has gone for a golden bullet option only which is 'as long as it serves Bedford Midland we don't much less care on anything else' which misses the point. Understandable, but we have a once in a lifetime chance to get this railway right and need to weigh the wider context carefully. No-one is saying 'go back to the drawing board' but for example, our southern route avoids the new Black Cat Roundabout and new road work configurations north of Little Barford/St Neots area, whereas the new route would have to cross the A421 / A1 and face gradients into/out of the Great Ouse/Ivel Valley. Once again, from Clapham-Milton Ernest to somewhere north of Ravenden to Tempsford, people get all the intrusion of a railway but no gain as their beef is a direct road arcing the north of Bedford for A1/A421-A6 transits without a 16 mile drive around Bedford via Kempston and Biddenham et al.
It needs dialogue and an inclusion in the frame of what we are suggesting is a more advantageous option. If Government cannot rule dispensations for level crossings where sensible to have them, then that needs looking into. They work perfectly fine with standard rolling stock triggering automatic engagement. In this respect, we should be looking at lengthening platforms of numerous halts along the Bedford-Bletchley line with some borrowed Turbos from Chiltern, to send these ex London Underground stock elsewhere. They seem unsuitable for the safe operation and reliability of the line, the exact same issues bedeveiled the former Railbuses on the Bedford-Hitchin line and we know what that led to - diminishing numbers and pre-Beeching closure and the rest is history!
We need to put Kempston Town on the Railway map (Bedford-Bletchley with a connecting footbridge to the Retail Park with extra parking off Southfields Road, Kempston. Likewise, were the southern route to prevail, trains could come through Bedford Midland from the north including a rebuilt Bedford-Northampton rail link and go off east or west on segregated tracks post getting through Bedford Midland either way.
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